Do not convince yourself that you need software in order to fix a broken business process. You will waste time, money and risk failure. Instead:
- Put the resources in place to fix the broken process.
- Involve the people that work the process.
- Require the team to use tools that are already available to design a working process.
- Have the same people work the new process long enough to test it comprehensively.
- Have those people sign-off on the new process. They know they will be living with the new process and will not sign off until they believe it is significantly better than the old process.
Once you have completed these five steps, you can consider new software to make the new process as efficient as possible. Following these simple steps will keep you from falling into the “software as a broken process solution” trap. Software truly is worthless if it does not tightly support a proven business process.
